Tag: newspaper

Like most things in Boston, the Globe has a rich history with many innovations throughout the years. Moriarty talked about Charles H. Taylor’s prototypical content innovations in 1873, when the Globe added sports coverage, stocks, and many other sections that we now consider essential to a modern, family newspaper (and sections we may not expect […] more »

MobileActive recently posted a call for guest posts on its site. A version of this guest post, which was written by Janet Gunter, originally appeared on MobileActive.org’s Mobile Media Toolkit blog. MobileActive chose to highlight this piece because it demonstrates how a free newspaper in Mozambique is using mobile tech to inform and engage readers, […] more »

Search engines, RSS feeds and content aggregators make a reader’s life easier by providing new ways to scan for articles and to discover news. One result of this is that readers may no longer feel the need to regularly visit their local paper’s website in order to stay informed about the goings-on around town. Following […] more »

Many news organizations use SMS to send out news alerts, but the Namibian, a daily paper in Namibia, has set up pages in its print edition and on its website to publish text-message letters to the editor submitted by readers. The Namibian is an independent newspaper with newsstand sales of 27,000 a day (with an […] more »

Unstructured data is typically said to account for up to 80 percent of information stored on business computer systems. While this is a widely accepted notion, I’m inclined to agree with Seth Grimes that this 80 percent rule is inflated, depending on the type of business. Still, If we could structure even a fraction of […] more »

Communities need information, particularly information about what government is doing, and how people can access government services. In South Africa, this information doesn’t flow so much as trickle — and often a paper-based trickle at that! The fact that communication between government and us citizens is so poor is arguably part of the reason why […] more »

Spare a thought for journalists these days, the folk feeling particularly unappreciated as they face a barrage of public scorn on the one hand and panic-stricken managements pushing for cuts in salaries, rises in productivity, and even retrenchments, on the other. They don’t want your pity. They’re seeking your respect — and your helpful answers […] more »

With all the talk of how newspapers can retain readers, it’s still worth remembering some useful advice to newspapers from more than ten years ago. It comes from Mike Smith, at that time the assistant director of the Newspaper Management Center at Northwestern University. In a publication titled Values. Culture.Content, he addressed the question, “How […] more »

It’s been a long six months, but I’m finally dusting off my keyboard and re-starting my blog here. First things first, a disclaimer: I don’t graduate until May, so it’s safe to say that I still don’t know what I’m talking about. My hands, however, are a little dirtier than before thanks to folks at […] more »

No, this article is not about broadcasters shifting to digital transmission. But it’s about something that’s also a huge change — uprooting from known territory and heading for the unknown complexities of digital country. Switch-over in the sense of convergence is the challenge facing South African community paper Grocott’s Mail. The publication is at the […] more »